Radio Times review

You know how the best way to spoil a joke is to explain it? Well, here comic and critic Natalie Haynes looks at attempts to write mathematical algorithms to create chuckles.

She hears recordings created by Graeme Ritchie at the University of Aberdeen and David Matthews of the University of Edinburgh, who have both written algorithms to generate simple jokes. Haynes places their attempts at computational comedy in the wider context of a society increasingly reliant on algorithms: from stock market trading to online dating.

In the end, though, as humans can't explain what's funny, what chance some computer code?

Top Edinburgh computer jokes attempt to rival Fringe

Computer generated jokes can make people laugh, researchers have found, although they are still not as funny as human witticisms.